


There Are No Tomorrow's

by Saraste



Series: Nwalin Week 2016 fics [5]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Angst, Braids and Beads, Dark, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Low-graphic depictions of violence, M/M, Miscarriage, Miscommunication, Mpreg, Nwalin Week, Semi-graphic depiction of miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:41:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6989461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nori is happy and complacent in his life, married to Dwalin and bearing their first child, just on the cusp on Dwalin braiding his bearing braids in.</p>
<p>Too complacent, as people from Nori's past come calling their debts, not really caring for Nori's marriage beads either. </p>
<p>Their happy tomorrow never comes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are No Tomorrow's

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a happy fic. Not happy at all. I'm sorry. This was written in a very angsty mind-set and during a time I was suffering physical pain. I can't even remember when I last write something this angsty, probably during my inumir days.
> 
> Written from nwalin week 2016 Day 5: **“Injury”** or “Comfort”.Unbeta'd.
> 
> This fic is part of the Nwalin pebble-verse I've been writing during nwalin week and is set before the events of [Beads, Braids and Babies](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6944815), and crops up in Nori's state of mind especially in [Home, Hearth and Soul](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6953809) but more heavily in [Shuttles and Soup](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6966430).
> 
> Do not read if the subject of miscarriage is a trigger for you, please.

Nwalin hadn't even started wearing his bearing braids when it happens. The beads offer protection and guarantee retribution to those who would think to harm a bearing Dwarrow. But they're still only sketches on Dwalin's work-desk, the braids a thing of tomorrow, for neither of them worry of anything happening to Nori inside the protection of the Mountain. They had counted on tomorrow being there and it betrayed them.

 

For the time before wearing bearing is very perilous for a bearer.

 

Nori hadn't gone borrowing trouble, he hadn't, trouble had come to him. Not now when he and Dwalin were together, happy. Not when they were expecting a little pebble of their own. Not when there was a tomorrow to wait for. Protection. Nori should have known that it was too good to last. It never did. Not for the likes of him.

 

They don't care about the beads that _do_ reside in his hair, Dwalin's beads, Dwalin's carefully woven braids, such big fingers so lovingly skilled at braiding them in whenever Nori has bathed. Nori braiding his own into Dwalin's hair, anchoring him in the feel of Dwalin's hair in his fingers and, for the last little while, the fluttering in his belly. He had felt _home_. And now look where _safety_ has gotten him. He had been too careless, too complacent, too familiar in his role as one of Thorin's Company, spouse to Dwalin Fundinul and... not Nori the Thief and Sneak from Ered Luin and beyond.

 

He had always known that his past would catch up to him. He just hadn't thought it would come when tomorrow was still on the sketch-board and should have happened yesterday. Not that it would have mattered with these low-lives.

 

Nori fights desperately, but against the odds he's been dealt, it isn't enough. He gets a kick and a knife into his gut and... No. No. No! All he'd wanted had been to keep his pebble safe! Their pebble which he'd now felt kick a handful of times. Precious priceless times. 

 

He sees Dwalin's smile in his mind's eyes, as his guard had held his hand on his bump and felt the pebble kick against his palm, before it all goes dark with a sharp pain to his head, a tug. Later, he thinks he might have heard Dwalin's beads clatter into the dirty alley floor. He remembers rough laughter in his nightmares. A stabbing pain where his pebble should be safe, safe, safe, until he was all forged and ready to come greet them. Feels all their robbed tomorrows as blood flows...

 

He bleeds. 

 

Somehow he manages to drag himself out from the back-alley they'd left him in, his head nigh bashed in, his braids ripped and his pebble dying. He'd come to with a pained jerk and gasp, hand grasping at his belly, trying to press and stop the bleeding, to... He crawls, he begs Mahal for mercy as he drags himself across the stone.

 

His body is fighting him for every inch forward. Blackness swallows him again just as he hears alarmed voices, footsteps vibrating through the stone under his blood-slicked palms, sees shapeless dark forms in the edges of his vision... 

 

… he wants tomorrow but they'll never get there.

 

* * *

 

Dwalin is furious. 

 

Nori is home, bleeding in their bed and their pebble... Dwalin wants to go and hunt those who had hurt his husband but he can't. Not when Nori... 

 

Dwalin paces the length of their bed-room floor. Ori's crying into his scarf, sitting in the window-seat of their family room, a stone-faced Dori keeping him company. Balin is not there, but is organizing the search in Dwalin's stead.

 

It's so damned quiet.

 

Dwalin paces. He glances at the bed where Nori is too still, drugged somnolent after his jerky waking when they had been bringing him in. He'd clung to Dwalin and begged him to save their pebble, blood on his lips, a dangerous pleading wildness burning in his eyes. He'd told Dwalin that he wanted all their tomorrow's. And Dwalin had promised.

 

It was a promise which Dwalin had no hope to keep, he know knew. Oín had shaken his head and there'd been... Dwalin hadn't wanted to know. He had known that maybe it should matter to him but... he just couldn't. He just wishes that Mahal doesn't take two. 

 

He wants to hunt those responsible down, wind his fingers around their throats and  _squeeze_ , squeeze until all life is gone. Or stab and leave them bleeding to death, like how they'd done to Nori. An axe to the neck would be too good for them.

 

Finally Oín washes up his hands.

 

Dwalin strides to the bed. Nori lies there, pale and his lovely hair a mess,  _braids unwoven_ , blood stills smudged on his brow. Dwalin almost crushes Nori's beads in his hand, where he'd been clinging to them. Nori looks so small and fragile, all quiet like that. He's always all animation, restless hands and easy smiles, chatter both with substance and without. Nori's never even this still when he sleeps, all flails and mumbling.

 

'Tell me.'

 

Oín looks older than his years. 'He'll live, bar infection. The stab wasn't too bad but the shock... and that was a nasty hit to his head. Well, you know that Mahal took back your pebble. I'm so sorry. There are no words.' But his voice says it all and Dwalin knowns their loss will be mourned. Oín briefly lays a comforting hand onto his shoulder. 'Those scum do not deserve to be called Dwarrow.' The old healer has seen too much. A heedless death like this... 

 

'Agreed.' But the brief flash of anger doesn't last for long. 'Can you tell...'

 

'Yes, laddie. You should stay with Nori. He shouldn't wake up anytime soon but it'll be something to have you close by, in any case.'

 

'Thank you.'

 

Dwalin only looks at Nori while Oín gathers his things, especially the cloth-bundle he had been too cowardly to look at. Still is. But he can't bear to look at what could have been. At the tomorrows that couldn't be saved.

 

*

 

… Nori wakes.

 

Nori wakes and he hurts. His eyes feel welded shut. His head is swirling. Mahal it hurts... He moans.

 

'Nori?'

 

Dwalin. He's safe. Dwalin safe. Good. Hurts. He shifts. He...

 

His fingers move against bandages over his middle, too coarse against his over-wrought senses. Why... His eyes try to flutter open with an effort. The light stabs at his half-lidded eyes, piercing. He groans. Shuts them again.

 

'Dwalin,' he croaks through a parched throat. There isn't... He doesn't  _feel_ right.

 

He remembers pain. Nasty laughter. Kicks. Stone floor under his slipping hands as he'd crawled...

 

'Dwalin...' he sobs, struggling to really open his eyes. He turns his heavy head away from the light. It takes him a moment to properly focus on Dwalin. What he sees is enough and too much. 

 

'No...' He shakes his head even when it makes pain lash through it, even when it makes lights flash in his vision, his eyes are already blurry with tears.

 

How long has been Dwalin holding his hand? Dwalin's big strong hand is trembling. There are no tomorrow's...

 

'Dwalin, no,' he whimpers, lost. He wants Dwalin to deny it. He's safe now. Home with Dwalin. It can't... He wants Dwalin to tell him what he feels isn't true. That they're still on the sketch-board, that Dwalin  _will_ still braid new lovely braid and beads into his hair, to keep their tomorrow's safe.

 

Yet all Nori feels is a dull aches in his belly. There is no fluttering sensation, now. No strange yet wonderful rolling. Or even a playful kick. No... 

 

He can't breathe.

 

'Oh, Nori...' Dwalin holds him, gentle, light, Nori's face pressed to his furs.

 

There is no need for such care for Nori is already broken. Not when there are no tomorrow's and no new braids or beads. Not when Nori couldn't even keep his most precious treasure safe. Not when Nori is the worst thing to happen to Dwalin.

 

*

 

The next day, after a fitful night, Nori refuses to sleep in their bed. Despite the fact that everyone is telling him that he oughtn't to be moved with his injuries. But after one look at his face has Dwalin caving in and Nori ends up convalescing in his brother's home. Dwalin bears him there in his strong arms, ignoring the hushed sympathetic whispers around them.

 

Dwalin spends the next few days interrogating the scum who'd cost them the life of their pebble, who'd robbed their tomorrows and made Dwalin tears his designs in a fit of tear-fuelled misery for it is bad luck to use the designs that never got worn. 

 

Nori doesn't speak to him much as they go to sleep every night in Dori's guest-room. But he doesn't talk to his brother's much, either. In the dead of night he sobs and trashes, wailing. And Dwalin holds him and talks to him and soothes him with words that are never enough. 

 

For tomorrow's will never come and they seem to go forward into yesterdays.

 

The look in Nori's eyes when he's awake is almost too horrible for Dwalin to stand, when Nori lays on their borrowed bed, listless and not eating much from what Dori tells, when Dwalin comes home from guard-duty... or from wandering the city when he cannot bear Nori's terrible silence. Nori lies prone and stares at the beads Dwalin had braided back into his hair while Nori had still been all cried-out and in the first throes of mourning. Nori never takes them off. 

 

Nori's attackers meet their just fate, shorn with braids and beads cut off first and then... It brings Dwalin no joy to see their deaths.

 

Nori heals.

 

They move back into their own home, but it doesn't feel like a home. Nori doesn't speak. He curls to sleep on a pile of blankets in their family room and Dwalin leaves him to it. He doesn't know how to fix the rift between them, to have them moving forward instead of back. Nori is too quiet.

 

Until he isn't anything at all.

 

It's spring and the caravan routes are open again and Dwalin comes home one day to find that Nori isn't there. He isn't at Dori's either, or anywhere where any of them can think of him to be, and no-one's seen him leave the Mountain, either. Though as it's Nori it's pretty much pointless even asking.

 

All the beads which Dwalin had ever braided into Nori's hair are neatly laid out in the middle of their kitchen table, together with the locks of Dwalin's hair which had been braided into their marriage braids. Had the attack not happened, the small pile of love beads and marriage beads would have included bearing beads and parent's beads. Their tomorrow's would have been now and should have been filled with laughter and Nori holding their pebble and caring for them so perfectly and Dwalin would have been right there with him.

 

*

 

Dwalin doesn't see Nori for almost a year after that. And even then, Nori doesn't come back for Dwalin. And Dwalin doesn't blame him for it. Even when he wants to.

 

 


End file.
